Previous Clients Include
Literature Reviews
If you want to know how shoppers are going to react to a new idea, you need data, and collecting this data can be expensive and time consuming. However, sometimes scientists have already tackled these problems and figured out the answers. For example, over the last twenty years consumer psychologists have run hundreds of experiments to understand:
- What sort of price promotions encourages shoppers to buy more?
- How does the design of a supermarket influence what shoppers buy?
- What style of product photos encourage people to buy online?
The only problem is this information is usually locked behind paywalls and written in a style that wouldn’t be out of place in the 1800s. Unless you have a background in academia it can be hard to find the right research.
If you’re facing a new research problem and you want to understand what previous academic research has shown, Gareth and his team create bespoke reports summarising the academic literature in a simple and easy to understand style with clear recommendations. They’ll help you understand what scientists already know so you don’t end up wasting money repeating research that has already been conducted, with the idea that they can be used to update your best practice ‘playbook’ or ‘bible’ around each topic.
Experiments
Sometimes in marketing you face a problem that nobody else has faced and in these situations there is no substitute for collecting your own data. Rather than relying on self-report tools such as questionnaires, focus groups or interviews to understand consumer behaviour, Gareth specialises in designing and running experiments.
If you explicitly ask people why they bought a specific product, they’ll stop and carefully consider every aspect of their decision. But in a supermarket, shoppers just glance at a shelf and make a split-second decision, while also being distracted by other shoppers. Consequently, rather than asking people what they think they’d do, Gareth creates experiments in real shops where he can measure actual shopper behaviour, using tools such as eye-tracking, observation, and of course sales data.
But while ‘bricks ‘n’ mortar’ stores were the dominant approach to selling in the 20th century, we now live in a different world. Online transactions now account for 26% of all retail sales, and what works in a physical store doesn’t necessarily work online. Consequently, Gareth creates closed online shops, replicating the website of online supermarkets. Here he can test new ideas such as how new product photos, descriptions, and price changes impact sales, before being rolled out on the main website. Being a closed website, they can quickly test new ideas in a safe environment where their rivals can’t visit.
'Your Consumer Psychologist'
Every marketing team needs to understand consumer psychology, to help make sure that their marketing is as effective as possible. But unless you are a large organisation you probably don’t need a full-time consumer psychologist.
And this is why we created the ‘your consumer psychologist’. This gives you your own Consumer Psychologists on call for an agreed number of hours per month, to work on projects and give you advice whenever you need it. This is ideal if you are wanting to explore how you can embed psychology into your business and improve both your tactical and strategic marketing.
As a former professor of Consumer Psychology, a Chartered Psychologist, and with over a decade’s worth of commercial experience, working with some of the largest brands in the world, Gareth is now brining this knowledge to smaller businesses who usually can’t afford this level of expertise.